At the beginning of the twenty-first century the bibliographic standards landscape is undergoing considerable development. Against a background of changing user expectations, technical possibilities and economic constraints, the British Library is reviewing its approach to traditional collection management and bibliographic standards. The lack of established standards for management of digital collections is leading to a period of experimentation in which research into future technologies sits alongside pragmatic solutions to deal with the realities of the transitional ‘hybrid library’. The authors present a personal view of current initiatives and developments in the British Library, including new technological opportunities and systems developments, digitization and digital object management, metadata schemas and application profiles. They also consider measures that are in place to handle the transition to a richer and more complex resource discovery future that is still evolving across the sector.
Resource Discovery for the Twenty-First Century Library: Case Studies and Perspectives on the Role of IT in User Engagement and Empowerment
